The Pianka situation is getting very, very ugly. I’ve been chatting with a member of the Texas Academy of Science, and people there are getting death threats over it. Here’s one example of the kind of email they’re getting:

While Heinrich Himmler’s “final solution” was limited to exterminating the Jews,
Dr. Eric R. Pianka promotes a FINAL SOLUTION for 90% of earth’s population. In
accepting the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award, Heir Pianka was
interrupted with applause and received a standing ovation.

“Soylent Green is people.” And the way cinema’s futurist society dealt
with over population was through the “Renewal Ceremony”, where the inductees
were secretly turned into FOOD for the remaining citizens.

AT LEAST THEY WERE TURNED INTO FOOD! Unleashing the Ebola virus on
humanity, as publicly advocated by reptilian advocate Dr. Pianka, would result
in billions of excruciating deaths and rotting corpses in the streets. Does
such a position increase the esteem of the Texas Academy of Science? Is the
Academy deem such a colleague as a visionary, exemplar, & eloquent

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! For a scientific community, however provincial, to
recognize Dr. Pianka sublimates wholesale genocide. His advocacy of the
extermination of most human life on the earth flies in the face of natural
selection, and is so patently absurd as to defy logical challenge. The Texas
Academy of Science, her directors, fellows, and members, is DIMINISHED through
close association with, and its elevation of, Dr. Eric R. Pianka.

If the Academy is to maintain public and professional credibility, it
must censure Dr. Pianka and rescind his “Distinguished” status. Please use
your personal and professional influence toward that immediate end.

Sincerely,

Keith M. Arnett

Keller, TX

The accounts from people who were there agree that Pianka was not encouraging the “unleashing” of viruses on people, but was warning of a likely natural result (and apparently, mentioning that this would be a great thing for the biosphere as a whole, despite its dire consequences for us). This is becoming a right-wing cause célèbre, however, and the leadership of the Texas Academy are facing a lot of hate and heat from the ignorant. If you’ve got a moment, you might want to contact a member or two of the Academy and mention your support.

Further proof that the anti-science mob can’t comprehend simple sentences, whether written or spoken. And the Texas anti-science mobs are trying to prove their old claim that everything is bigger in Texas — idiocy certainly is. Sensible Texans should be rounding these goofballs up and force them to go back to junior high for some remedial reading/listening.

Hot diggity! I knew I made the right choice by choosing this college; all the fun is down here at UT these days. First Paul Nelson stops by to get schooled, then Dr. Pianka gets accused of terrorism. Any chance this is the DI’s way of insinuating that that our biology department is evil, just because Dr. Sarkar owned Nelson?

This is the fourth time in a month I’ve posted slightly different versions of this —

Scientists, academics, and other vocal ID critics should expect to eventually be demonized as dishonest, anti-Christian, and anti-American. This could get quite personal and spread to ID footsoldiers around the country. Imagine screaming picketers equating you to Satan outside your home. It’s not unimaginable this brush may tar scientists, academics, teachers, etc., in general, if doing so is useful for those with a broader sociopolitical agenda. Those people are good at it — look what they did to the word “liberal”. It’s a logical endpoint to their strategy and tactics. After R.I.N.O. comes A.I.N.O. [Americans in Name Only].

In years past, the University of Texas and other fine institutions in “flyover country” had some pretty good success poaching top-notch talent from California universities.

However, if things continue to get crazier out there in “wingnut land”, maybe we’ll be able to convince some of those talented folks who abandoned us to overlook our crazy housing prices, traffic, smog, earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, etc… and come back to California!

(On second thought, scratch the wildfires — California’s got nothing on Texas and Oklahoma in the wildfire dept. as the past few months have shown.)

For example, instead of using a bioweapon to kill people we create a bioweapon that attacks women’s egg cells (and maybe male sperm too) or the lining of the womb the egg cells must attach to so that most (but not all) women (and maybe men too) exposed to it become sterile?

Then you could unleash it in the mideast and vacinate selected parts of your own population against it.

America would probably get blamed for it — but I suspect China might do it if it could.

the talk wasn’t recorded and I’m not sure if it was transcribed so it might not be possible for TAS to post the full speech although that would be nice just so people could realize how out of context things have been taken.

Dr. Pianka in no way advocated billions of deaths from Ebola or said anything that would lead a reasonable person to think he was doing so. – playing the “irrascible curmudgeon” – is about the strongest honest statement you could make about what was said. He showed a slide of an Ebola virus and mentioned Ebola Reston and said that it wouldn’t take much for Ebola to be an airborne disease and at our current levels of overpopulation it would be deadly. Populations of any organism that exceed their carrying capacity are susceptible to population reduction from disease through several routes including stress due to overcrowding and the overcrowding itself leading to disease transmission and that is the only point he was making, is that we are doing this to ourselves.

I just emailed the presidents and secretaries of the TAS a letter supporting their choice of Pianka as a distinguished member and got an immediate reply thanking me. It sounds like they need to hear some kind words.

While I don’t support Mims’ leap from “Pianka’s wishes” to “Pianka’s plots,” I do find it unscientific and inappropriate for an honoree of a scientific body to take glee in the thought of wiping out 90% of humanity through whatever means. And there hasn’t been much commentary on Pianka’s alleged support of China’s one-child policy (which is a clear violation of human rights), which should also garner him censure.

Pianka is an ass. So may Mims be, but this time he got some of it right. Pianka is in no way deserving of honor or admiration.

I’ve tried to write this comment in a polite, explanatory way about 6 different times, but I can’t really do it. Elizabeth, your comment is just really, really dumb. What exactly amounts to not getting the story straight?

Did you attend Pianka’s talk? If so, please tell us in what way he took glee in the thought of wiping out 90% of humanity. Please be detailed as so far you have not been.

If you didn’t attend the talk, for which there apparently is no video or even transcript, from what are you drawing your statements? See, “I can’t take criticism seriously from another who can’t get a story straight” and I’m not convinced you have any actual data from which to get the story straight.

‘Wiping out’ is a phrase in the active voice. ‘Being wiped out’ is passive.

While I suspect very few people would actually take pleasure in the thought of 90% of humanity dying (and the ones who would mostly aren’t thinking about or don’t care about the consequences to themselves, which are likely to be highly unpleasant either way), there IS a difference between taking pleasure at the thought of wiping out humanity as opposed to humanity being wiped out. The first requires that the person spoken of actively take part, and the second does not.

For the record, I’m firmly on the side of Sturgeon’s Law on this matter, but I don’t think airborne Ebola would be good for anyone or anything. Except possibly the environment, and taking the *very* long view. Human beings are not innately precious snowflakes that are more valuable than any non-human things, but suffering is suffering.

If you’re the kind of person whose worldview includes such moral imperatives as abortion is murder, climate change is bunk, economic growth at any cost, etc., you, too, would be outraged by Pianka. He is, after all, accusing you of destroying the natural conditions for life on this planet. Guilty as charged.

“Human beings are not innately precious snowflakes that are more valuable than any non-human things, but suffering is suffering.”

I’ve always been fascinated by this perspective…

*You* are human, right? You are the valuer, right? So why not choose to value yourself? You exist in symbiosis with lots of other human beings, so why not choose to value them too?

Nihilism is a stage in recovery from Platonism and religion. You’ve abandoned the concept of a supernatural super-valuer but have not learned how to substitute your own values in it’s place. Some people never pass through this phase, and they get caught up in secular versions of apocalyptic religious ideology or even dumber traps.

I wasn’t present for Pianka’s talk, so I can’t really say anything with authority. However, I have heard people say things like what Mims *claims* that he said before, so I don’t find it that hard to believe.

Even if Mims is a creationist, I do have some respect for him due to his other accomplishments. I recall enjoying his writings on electronics when I was younger. He doesn’t seem like that much of a raging lunatic.

BTW, how do you know Mims is a creationist? He doesn’t feature any creationist/ID rhetoric prominently on his site, and he’d be the first creationist or IDer I have *ever* seen who doesn’t do so. Usually those guys are a walking anti-evolution klaxon. Maybe he’s just in the “shrug… seems plausible to me…” ID camp. Lots of engineers are, for reasons that have been written about at length around here.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Seriously, though, what makes you say that? I’d be happy to hear an argument for the inherent specialness of humankind, but “Yes, we are” certainly isn’t it.

Science can’t prove it one way or the other because science can’t determine value – but philosophy can.

The great historical philosophers thought humans are more valuable and so does 99.9% of the worldwide population (today and historically). If you think you’re right then it’s up to you to convice the rest of the world you are right.

Even with your best philosophical armor on I think you’ll have a long, hard battle ahead of you – a losing one at that.

Gee, why haven’t these people been reporting George Carlin to the Feds?

… We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet’s doing. …

Sorry, but where is the death threat in that letter? And what is the source of that letter? And why was the video camera turned off? And where are these other accounts? All I can find is an account by one of the Academy’s own members! That’s pretty dang reliable in my book. (Perhaps you should start smearing Forrest Mims.)

It is? I’ve read her stories before — I remember one where a scientist is travelling around the world with his diseased birds… that wasn’t what I later suggested (making at least women sterile with a bioweapon) it was a killer.

If Alice Sheldon wrote about a sterilization bioweapon — I’d like to read it.

@Katherine Perez: From your comments, it seems like you were in attendance at the speech and you are in contact with members of the Texas Academy. I also see from your CV that you’ve presented papers at prior meetings and received a number of Student Awards. A full account from you and from any other attendees you know of would go a long way to quelling this controversy and discrediting Mr. Mimms’ account. A press release from the Academy would also be helpful. Any chance of action?

If you didn’t attend the talk, for which there apparently is no video or even transcript, from what are you drawing your statements?

From comments in this blog and other places by former students of Pianka’s who recall him often stating that he was looking forward to most of humanity being wiped out by disease.

Since the speech wasn’t taped – whether by accident or intent – it’s likely that we’ll never know the tone in which the speech was delivered, even if we do see an actual or cleaned-up transcript. But prior statements seems to indicate that he in fact anticipates with pleasure the day that 90% of the population is wiped out by disease. (I don’t know why he keeps using Ebola as an example, though – it’s not a likely candidate.)

I’ve tried to write this comment in a polite, explanatory way about 6 different times, but I can’t really do it. Elizabeth, your comment is just really, really dumb. What exactly amounts to not getting the story straight?

Apologies; my comment was unclear. P has accused Mims of making unsupported allegations. P did the same – he claimed that death threats had been sent, and supported that statement with an email that contained no death threats. Seems both sensational and hypocritical.

Apologies; my comment was unclear. P has accused Mims of making unsupported allegations. P did the same – he claimed that death threats had been sent, and supported that statement with an email that contained no death threats. Seems both sensational and hypocritical.

PZ wrote:

Here’s one example of the kind of email they’re getting:

Which to me doesn’t imply it contained support for the claim of the death threats.

Lurker, instead of being flip, I’ll address your point honestly — I think your formulation of the values problem is over-simplistic. Both other species and other humans contribute greatly to the quality of my life. Cows make great steaks and hamburgers, other humans remove my trash and build my cars. The question is when do more humans start having negative value — I suspect we are at that point where it will have a negative impact on the quality of our lives.

We should be more intelligent about how we breed… but people won’t listen to that.

Of course most of humanity thinks it’s more special than other animals. I would imagine that dogs, were they capable of such philosophical ruminating, would think they’re more special too.

But just because most parents think their offspring are the world’s smartest babies ever, does not make it so. And I would say that science – and as this is a a science blog, it seems to me that science trumps philosophy – does not indicate that humans are particularly special.

Maybe when we’ve outlasted cockroaches and sharks, we can make such a claim. Maybe.

China’s one-child policy is an extreme solution for an extreme problem. But the crime is less about parents being allowed only one child and more about boys being favored over girls and the resulting atrocities that promotes.

I should probably add that while I find Mims and Dembski and drudge destestable for hyping this into something it isn’t, I also think Pianka’s ideas about human carrying capacity and the value of ecology over human life are darn right crackpot. There’s no good evidence that humans are headed for a crash or are overpopulated (and no clear sense as to what they word would even mean in terms of human beings). Pianka is just spreading more silly eco-hysteria. There are many problems we face that we caused for ourselves and the ecology, but hopefully also that we can solve. But there is no intrinsic “comeuppance” in nature, and we don’t deserve any particular kind of natural response.

Norman: If Alice Sheldon wrote about a sterilization bioweapon — I’d like to read it.

It’s on line — just googled it — at SciFi.com. The author is listed as Racoona Sheldon. It’s a bioweapon all right. Just not from one of the usual suspects. (I read it in Analog, years ago. It isn’t one you really forget.)

“We should be more intelligent about how we breed… but people won’t listen to that.”

If you tell people not to breed, they are not going to listen. Any that do will leave no offspring. They have 4.5 billion years of history telling them otherwise.

Now, if you mean that people should have fewer children but invest more in them, you might get some traction with that. This is the general tendency in most modern countries. Some even have reproduction rates that are below replacement level and may actually suffer from underpopulation in a generation or two.

BTW, I wonder if the comment about Pianka supporting the Chinese one child program is true? This program is, as others have pointed out, a gross violation of human rights and contributes to child abuse, abuse of women, and the slave trade. I’d have to doubt the ethics of anyone who advocated such a program.

The great historical [human] philosophers thought humans are more valuable and so does 99.9% of the worldwide [human] population (today and historically).

Sure. Humans Are The Best! All Humans Agree!

Actually, I don’t agree that humans value all humans above all non-humans. Human individuals seem to value self and ‘family’ above all others, including ‘others’ of the human variety. For many, a little bit of human life is worth sacrificing for other, more valuable objects. Not that this really addresses the issue of “are humans better than everything else”.

Even if you really believed that the human species were ‘more valuable’ than other species, it doesn’t follow that you want human populations to multiply infinitely, filling every possible nook and cranny of the universe with human flesh. It’s just an admission of reality to say that humans cannot reproduce exponentially for long, and that in order to survive we must be able to maintain an environment that is capable of supporting human life (which includes many other ‘valuable’ organisms).

From the virus’ point of view, going airborn wouldn’t be the best thing for ebola. It’d kill too many hosts too quickly and the remainder might be so resistent to infection that it could die out. What ebola needs is to become less virulent so that its hosts survive long enough to reproduce so it can sustain itself over the long run. The ideal virus is entirely integrated with the host and causes no problems for it. Whatever that means to this argument.

Adam Ierymenko wrote:… if you mean that people should have fewer children but invest more in them, you might get some traction with that. This is the general tendency in most modern countries. Some even have reproduction rates that are below replacement level and may actually suffer from underpopulation in a generation or two.

Yes, less children, more invested and the solution to underpopulation is immigration. Immigration with some rules about who you let in since Europe is having problems with its muslim immigrants.

And as far as the Chinese one child program it brought to my mind an episode of Star Trek (original series) where a leader had to make a choice something like “Kill off half the population, or everyone dies.” Which choice do you make? The leader chose to kill half the population and was considered a monster by most. Only his few immediate friends and his daughter considered him the savior of the other half. And even after making the most rational choice he could he spent the rest of his life haunted by guilt as an actor playing MacBeth.

Yes, you do have to doubt the ethics of anyone who advocated such a program, but doubt isn’t certainty. If ethics are linked to values, then all our ethics are selfish — based on what we value.

How on earth does Pianka’s misanthropic attitude constitute a threat to the world’s population? Does he have the Evil Eye? Is he a houngan calling down Papa Legba? If that’s the case, why the death threats? Can’t we just defeat him by clapping real loud and saying, “I believe in fairies!” Then Tinkerbell will come back to life on the third day to help Peter defeat the evil Captain Pianka and his giant crocodile.

Or perhaps he possesses super-secret Hollywood-style Mad Scientist technology? You see, once he perfects his race of Atomic Super-Men, immune to Ebola and dengue fever (everybody always forgets dengue fever — that’s what makes it dangerous), no one can stop his plan to unleash the Ebola-Ray on the world. All he needs is the spinal fluid of a beautiful woman to inject into his Radium-Gorilla.

Either that, or he’s a cranky, misanthropic old Malthusian, a species which is more commonly found at the end of the bar at 10:00 AM nursing a small beer.

The one-child policy is one of many crimes perpetrated against the Chinese people by the Red Dynasty. I’m not familiar with Pianka’s stand on the matter, but if he endorses it, then he’s wrong, of course.

China has two alternatives to choose from to avert mass starvation. One is to enforce draconian population-control laws, and the other is to free the peasants to farm as they see fit, and let them buy and sell land, and benefit individually from their labor. Capitalism and (relatively) free markets are why the USA no longer needs 80% of our population to work on farms just to feed us (and much of the rest of the world.) As China’s standard of living increases, their birthrates will decline, just as they have in the west.

With exponential population growth though eventually a prediction will be correct.

There’s a potential for a soft landing, though it would require people to act a lot more rationally than we might expect them to. Anyway, exponential growth rates are only good approximations in some circumstances. Populations can be at an equilibrium, just by reproducing at replacement rate. Already, birthrates seem to be on the decline in more affluent societies.

I would say that it is not the sheer number of people but our resource consumption that is most likely to be our undoing. Even in that case, it’s just possible that we could gradually scale back on wasteful behavior without experiencing sudden, catastrophic hardship. Many of the things we associate with quality of life are based on cultural norms that could easily change. Standard of living metrics based on pushing around large quantities of matter are bound to decrease. We can’t all have 3/4 acres and a Hummer. On the other hand, we could in principle be richer in culture and information. We could even live longer, healthier lives–with appropriate birthrate adjustments.

There are also plenty of off-world resources, but the emigration of already-existing humans into space looks like a total fantasy based on energy requirements. You could, however, have autonomous self-replicating machines to extract materials from elsewhere in the solar system and send these or even finished products back to earth. You could also conceivably have an expanding human population, off-world though that would not do much good for those who happened to remain on earth, which I suspect would remain densely populated (since I doubt they’ll take my advice to turn it into park after we colonize Mars).

Do I think that’s a realistic scenario? Actually, I think it’s probably less likely than a “singularity” scenario in which the dominant earth-centric intelligent life form consists of nanotech entities that far surpass us in powers of cognition and also don’t need to push as much matter around to accomplish simple things. I’m not sure what will happen to biological humans. Maybe we’ll still be here while our mind-children ask silly questions like “If we evolved from humans, then why are there still humans?”

Capitalism and (relatively) free markets are why the USA no longer needs 80% of our population to work on farms just to feed us (and much of the rest of the world.)

It doesn’t hurt that we in the US have an awful lot of arable land per capita. Have you ever seen China from an airplane? No doubt the Chinese could produce food more efficiently, and I’m agnostic as to whether agricultural market reform is the ticket. I think GM crops might have a bigger impact. Either way, there’s still a limit of how much food China can produce and no magic formula that will allow its population to grow indefinitely.

The whole moral argument for anthropocentrism has always interested me… I would argue (though I don’t fully believe it in my heart, I haven’t found a logical reason to reject it) that we do not have an inherent moral obligation towards nature – nature is much, much stronger than us. We will render the planet uninhabitable for ourselves long before we destroy life; on a geologic timescale our effect, even at it’s worst, will be relatively minor. Are we causing a mass extinction? Unquestionably. Should we try to stop? Absolutely – but not because the Spotted Owl (or the Barton Creek Salamander, or the what have you) must be preserved – remember that extinction is the rule. The only way for me to justify saving the environment is from an anthropocentric perspective; that we must save these things because it’s the only chance we have for saving ourselves. Others are comfortable arguing moral conservationism from a religeous perspective (Cal DeWitt, for instance; with great success, I might add)- I’m an athiest. I’m not.

That said, nature, and the world, won’t miss us if we fail. Nature will find a new balance, relatively quickly. If we’re ok with not being there than we may as well carry on as we are – if not, we should think seriously about how to stop it.

So I would argue that humans are special – not to the world, not to nature, not to the universe, but to ourselves. To the rest of it, we’re a blip; no more interesting than an ant, or a tree, or a dinosaur.

In a different direction, I have to say the fact that anyone seriously believes a group of scientists would give someone arguing for genocide a standing ovation demonstrates still further how far the general public is from understanding and trusting science. Which is sad.

And what would happen if some pre-millenialists began to wax lyrical over the billions who would die during the version of the Apocalypse they’re so fond of? Nothing of course. It’s already happened, and it’s a best-selling series.

The only reason humans are “more special” than the rest of the grand tapestry of life on Earth is because none of the rest of Gawd’s Critters have developed the ability to tell us an opinion otherwise. Except maybe cats. Human beings are only special to human beings (and even then, it’s a case-by-case situation); the rest of the universe could give a damn.

For the high value types… Which would you prefer, the death of all plankton or the death of a few million humans? Note: this is a trick question, since 90% of the oxygen we breath comes from plankton…

While I place human life highest on the list of valuable creatures, I do it with a “presumption” that what other life form might die instead “isn’t” going to turn out to be critical to the survival of what I hold in high value. The problem some people seem to be missing is that you can’t just magically assume that humans are going to be hear forever or that we can do anything we want without consequences. I don’t entirely agree with the assessment that humans can’t benefit the ecology and that Ebola might help it because of that. That view is held by a lot of nuts, but they are no more or less nuts than the morons that insist that the damage we can and do cause is irrelevant, since it only hurts some random less important animals. As usual, both sides of the fence are completely off their rockers. Even if they do sometimes have valid points, such as in this case.

Speaking of the singularity–well I was, anyway–you have to wonder why the shoot-the-messenger fundies aren’t more concerned with Ray Kurzweil and the like.

The singularity http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1 has been called the rapture for geeks, and there is some validity to this phrase. Kurzweil is predicting the obsolescence of the biological human, which in the view of most current religions is tantamount to the demise of the human, since the proposed replacement is not to be found in the ancient books. It may happen or not. It strikes me as a good bit more plausible than the endtimes envisioned by John. Is Kurzweil just too much of a geek phenomenon to draw fire from the fundies or is he a target as well?

I don’t understand the conflation of people who findi Pianka’s statements offensive and unscientific, and people who are Christian and/or Creationist. I’m an agnostic who strongly endorses evolution. I don’t however, endorse or find appropriate the honoring of a man who thinks it would be great if people were mostly wiped off the mat, and finds horrible diseases and forced abortions and sterllizations acceptable methods to that end.

China’s one-child policy is an extreme solution for an extreme problem. But the crime is less about parents being allowed only one child and more about boys being favored over girls and the resulting atrocities that promotes.

Yes! Thank you Matt. The One-Child Policy is a draconian measure, but the country is faced with an immense population problem. It seems to me their biggest crime in the whole issue is that it took them so long to start doing something about changing people’s attitudes about girls vs. boys.

“China’s one-child policy is an extreme solution for an extreme problem. But the crime is less about parents being allowed only one child and more about boys being favored over girls and the resulting atrocities that promotes.”

Yes! Thank you Matt. The One-Child Policy is a draconian measure, but the country is faced with an immense population problem. It seems to me their biggest crime in the whole issue is that it took them so long to start doing something about changing people’s attitudes about girls vs. boys.

So forced abortions and forced sterilizations aren’t a problem, as long as the outcome is gender-neutral?

“China’s one-child policy is an extreme solution for an extreme problem. But the crime is less about parents being allowed only one child and more about boys being favored over girls and the resulting atrocities that promotes.”

Yes! Thank you Matt. The One-Child Policy is a draconian measure, but the country is faced with an immense population problem. It seems to me their biggest crime in the whole issue is that it took them so long to start doing something about changing people’s attitudes about girls vs. boys.

So forced abortions and forced sterilizations aren’t a problem, as long as the outcome is gender-neutral?

Take your time in fabricating… er… “producing” these alleged death threats, PZ. Meanwhile, I wonder if Mr. Arnett would appreciate knowing you are using his innocuous email as an example of these alleged death threats.

Lurker,
I should begin by saying that, although I have post-secondary education, I’m not a scientist. So, grains of salt, etc. If anything I say is incorrect, I invite someone to please correct me; I don’t wish to inadvertantly say things that are untrue.

But I think the question of “specialness” can be addressed by both philosophy and science, though of course the determination of what exactly would make humanity “special” is a subjective one. That said, I think in biological terms, humanity is not particularly special – we share many similarities to animals, because we are an animal. We share many similarities to mammals, more specifically, and to primates, more specifically still.

To be even more precise, throughout history, humanity has pointed to its own dominance of the globe as a signifier of its “specialness”. But other species have dominated the globe before us and probably will after us too. And arguably, there’s species who are currently dominating the globe – the various species of insects, for instance, seem especially prolific and very good at surviving through the ages.

Death Threats Smeash Threats you’re a perfect illustration of how the wingers twist reality to suit their preconceived notions.

PZ never said that email was an example of the death threats, only that it was an example of the types of emails they are getting.

Further more Arnett’s email is hardly innocuous, it’s a smear, an exaggeration, a falsehood, and it’s just plain BS.

Pianka did not advocate unleashing Ebola on humankind, he simply said the virus could very likely mutate into a form that could be more transmissible, unleashing ITSELF on mankind and he said stated that although humanity would suffer from that, that the rest of the world creatures would benefit. That is a statement of fact, since humans are the greatest transformers of the planet. It’s simply a cause and effect relationship. He never said we should precipitate Ebola’s evolution; he said its evolution is likely and stated the obvious impact of a reduction in human population to the rest of the biosphere.

That’s hardly advocacy. Why should someone get reported to DHS for such innocuous theorizing? Pathetic.

Do you think we ought to report anyone who prays for the rapture to DHS? If you believe in the power of prayer and pray for the rapture, then aren’t you guilty of trying to bring on the death of billions? No I didn’t think so.

Meh. How can anyone doubt that there have been death threats? If you’re in the public eye for the most innocent of reasons, someone will write a threatening letter. When scientists are openly propagandised against by deliberate confusion with Nazism, for sure some mancurian candidates will take that as a cue to pen revenge porn. Stoke up enough rage and who knows how many will be convinced that words are not enough?

Emily: “What’s all this I hear about Genocide? Just because someone makes a second-rate beer in upstate New York is that any reason to get upset? There’s college kids passing out and barfing Budweiser in flower boxes all over this country and I don’t hear anyone complaining about that! You think those ‘girls gone wild’ are sober?
They’re not all drinking Genocide I can tell you that!”

Jane: Genessee!

Emily: What?

Jane: Genessee. The beer is Genessee. Genocide is mass murder.

Emily: Oh. That’s very different. Never mind.

So tell me again. How do we get from the concept of nature correcting an imbalance to advocating mass murder? Our technology allows us to sustain this overpopulation, and the long-term effects of overpopulation can be seen in the once-fertile crescent. Should our societies collapse, the population would follow, even if the struggling countries had to start a world war. Sound familiar?

Whether you think it’s a good or bad is one kind of question, whether the human population is going to crash is another. I’m not a votary of Gaia and I don’t normally capitalize Nature as if she really were a godess. On the other hand, I don’t see a way for the planet to sustain 10 billion plus people. If that’s so, people’s attitudes are not the critical issue.

Regarding the question of death threats, I have not seen any myself, but I am willing to wager that they have been sent in Pianka’s direction. We are, after all, talking about fundies, and sending people death threats whenever they hear something they don’t like seems to be a favorite hobby of theirs.
Regarding the issue of human beings versus non-human animals, I don’t see any reason whatsoever to believe that human animals are any more special than non-human animals. I do not believe that human life is any more valuable than any other form of life. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that humans are the biggest detriment to the Earth’s survival than any other living species.

It’s telling to observe the grand assumptions replete in this discussion. It is equally telling, the facts which are absent from this discussion. There is this reductionist approach in comparing humans to other animal species and yet we hear nothing of the abilities of humans which demonstrate the vast chasm between us and all other creatures. i.e. all that which flows from the human mind – reason, speech, altruism, 1st person perspective, this curious “wiring” to ponder (and argue on internet forums) about our purpose and meaning. And all this assumption without evidence regarding these abilities being born out of necessity, that we might survive. Nevermind the likelihood of us arriving at our level of technology and understanding in such a relatively short amount of time, eh? It seems that the whole story is not being conveyed here and that there is a tremendous amount of assumption going on, based on philosophy pretending to be science.

When I look at the whole picture, specified information encoded along the DNA molecule, an inherent sense of an objective moral standard with which to juxtapose decisions, a wiring to seek out my purpose, a record of natural events which does anything but support a blind, unguided, gradualistic origin of the human species, etc… etc…

I have to conclude that just maybe we are “special” and that we are where we are as the result of a plan of some kind.

yet we hear nothing of the abilities of humans which demonstrate the vast chasm between us and all other creatures. i.e. all that which flows from the human mind – reason, speech, altruism, 1st person perspective,

Ay-yup. We;’re special. Uh-huh.

Plenty of animals are capable of reason. Communication. Altruism is incredibly common in the animal kingdom, and my cat has a “1st person perspctive”. We differ in degree, but none of these traits are unique to us.

Like “specified information”, it’s yet another unevidenced assertion by the under-informed.

Scott wrote:“It’s telling to observe the grand assumptions replete in this discussion. It is equally telling, the facts which are absent from this discussion. There is this reductionist approach in comparing humans to other animal species and yet we hear nothing of the abilities of humans which demonstrate the vast chasm between us and all other creatures. i.e. all that which flows from the human mind – reason, speech, altruism, …”

Altruism is not unique to humans, dogs will risk and even sacrifice their lives for their owners. Mother lion will sacrifice herself for her cubs.

Monkeys do have a certain amount of reasoning ability and can learn at least a limited form of language.

“And all this assumption without evidence regarding these abilities being born out of necessity, that we might survive.”

I disagree. There is evidence our great brains were an enormous survival advantage.

I guess you don’t like evolutionary psychology, do you.

…”When I look at the whole picture, specified information …”

Specified information? Isn’t that an ID term?

“I have to conclude that just maybe we are “special” and that we are where we are as the result of a plan of some kind.”

And I have to conclude that you’re a god-believer with faith blinders on and the ID/apologist rhetoric memorized rather than really thought about.

Demonstrate for me how your cat has a first person perspective and a unique sense of self. Does your cat also ponder it’s existance? That’s a special kitty you have there.

And I didn’t say that other animals do not communicate. My point was that there is something that sets us apart, dramatically. Things like reason and true altruism (the kind which presents no advantage whatsoever to the one being selfless).

Specified Information an unevidenced assertion? Are you suggesting that the nucleotide alphabet encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule is without evidence? Interesting. Why don’t you explain to me how this instructional information with backup and protection programming, is somehow the result of unintelligent causes.

*You* are human, right? You are the valuer, right? So why not choose to value yourself?

You know, so many of the problems of the Internet would be solved if people would just learn how to read properly. It’s all about the comprehension, not just knowing how sounds map to squiggly lines.

Humans are not *inherently* more valuable than *any* other things. Not that humans are not valuable, or that I don’t value them at all, or that I don’t value myself, or whatever else you’ve managed to misconstrue.

Science can’t prove it one way or the other because science can’t determine value – but philosophy can.

Oh brother.

Look, anything good that originates in philosophy is immediately sucked into the field it belongs in. What’s left is the remnants and the stuff no one wants to claim, usually because it’s grotesquely poorly reasoned. Philosophy couldn’t prove its way out of a paper bag if you gave it a map and a sonic screwdriver.

I won’t even address the argument from authority/popularity duo fallacy you use next.

Man measures all things. It is not the measure of all things. You’d do well to remember that.

“Altruism is not unique to humans, dogs will risk and even sacrifice their lives for their owners. Mother lion will sacrifice herself for her cubs.”

“Monkeys do have a certain amount of reasoning ability and can learn at least a limited form of language.”

Sudden spurts of protective instinct are not the same as a Mother Theresa who calculates an existance of self denial to serve those who are not related to her, for example.

Sure, monkeys can communicate, so can dolphins, the list goes on and on. What they cannot do is develop a sense of unique-selfhood and reason.

“I disagree. There is evidence our great brains were an enormous survival advantage.”

The question is, is “survival advantage” a sufficient explanation for who we are and where we are now? Especially in light of what we are now observing in science, namely on the molecular level.

“I guess you don’t like evolutionary psychology, do you.”

I find it’s premise to be shaky at best and it’s therefore riddled with more holes than a wheel of swiss cheese.

“Specified information? Isn’t that an ID term?”

Errr, that would a logical inference based on what DNA is. Nucleotides arranged as specific coding. Coding is information. Every example of specified information we know of has an intelligent agent as it’s source. Programs require programmers.

“And I have to conclude that you’re a god-believer with faith blinders on and the ID/apologist rhetoric memorized rather than really thought about.”

And that allows me to conclude that you are a philosophically biased assumption-maker who is likely not intellectually honest in any way, shape, or form.

Scott – The only trait that you have listed that can be clearly demonstrated as unique to humans is speech. It is entirely possible that other animals have the ability to reason (perhaps not to the extent that humans can, but the possibility is certainly there). Altruism has been demonstrated in ground squirrels and other animals. I don’t see why it is entirely impossible for other animals to contemplate things and have some concept of self. I certainly cannot show that animals do in fact possess these abilities, but I think that you are equally incapable of showing that they do not. However, even if they do not share these capabilities with Homo sapiens, each species possesses it’s own unique characteristics. Tardigrades can do some really amazing things that no other animal can do. If you want to argue that “uniqueness” = “specialness”, then all species are special as all species are unique.

“In light of the evidence from both biology and from genetic algorithms, could you explain how it is NOT the result of uninteligent causes?”

Umm, it is precisely algorithms which demonstrate that Complex Specified Information, as in the 4 Nucleotide instructional alphabet encoded on the spine of the DNA molecule, could not have come about by unintelligent natural processes.

There are several good books I could recommend, if you are interested?

The ideal virus is entirely integrated with the host and causes no problems for it.

That’s a fairly stable strategy, but in the right conditions a mutated virus that causes harm but spreads rapidly can once again become dominant.

There is no simple “best” strategy in actual biology. There are overarching tendencies, yes, and when you simply the game sufficiently you tend to produce Tit for Tat, but the vast complexity of reality ensures that no population ever reaches a true steady-state.

The purpose of this email is to give you my support, as a fellow scientist, for your research and your right to discuss the implications of known principles of evolutionary biology.

++++++++++

Below is a copy of an email I sent to officers of The Texas Academy of Science Online.

To my fellow scientists at The Texas Academy of Science Online:

Regarding the Pianka situation, I and my company give you all of the moral and professional support we can muster. We stand behind you as scientists, and we thoroughly denounce and abhor the hate mail and threats.

This is a time that calls for professional, personal, and moral courage. I know it is easy for me to say this, but I hope you will not be intimidated by these anonymous goons. Hopefully, this will pass and we will all go back to our committment to our science, and the joy and satisfaction of our work.

++++++++++

Below is a message I sent to Jamie Mobley of the Sequin Gazette, the reporter who broke the story, and who asked information about my support for you.

Jamie,

The purpose of this email is to give you my professional and personal views on the Pianka matter.

The function of science is to describe the properties of things: Things like liquid water, the particle nature of subatomic phenomenon, the epidemiological course of deadly pathogens, and religious behavior as a natural phenomenon (not as a matter of faith.) This work leads to the ability to predict other properties and behaviors of things. Some scientists are able to develop theories that help to understand these properties in a more parsimonious way, and make even better predictions. Over time, with more research, theories and predictions improve or even change.

Sometimes scientific theories and predictions bear directly upon important social policy issues like public health, environmental protection, military defense, and early childhood education. Scientists must be free to pursue their work of describing nature without the threat of retaliation, silencing by political authority, and harassment by megalomanical ideologues.

We have already seen explicit rewriting and purging of important scientific information from sound scientific research by the Bush administration and federal agencies. We now know about the intimidation of scientists who are only reporting their data and discussing scientific implications and predictions.

The anti-modernity character of fundamentalism is a response to the challenge of orthodoxy that modern science can provoke. Science and scientists are demonized and punished by political and ideological leaders, so they do not have to give up claims of exclusive access to revelation and the authority to be the sole arbiters of truth.

The defamation of Pianka goes beyond slander, it’s outright kookie in its misrepresentation of Pianka. As a psychologist, I might be tempted to call it irrational, paranoid, or the excessive perseverence of honestly held beliefs. The real issue, however, is the deliberate self-assumption of unearned power and authority. They exploit a following that provides unlimited adulation, and create the belief in others that they really can exercise discretion over the life and death of offending scientists. This is powerful stuff. What better way to flex this unearned authoritative muscle than to turn in these ‘evil’ scientists to the Department of Homeland Security and expose them for the terrorists they are. This is an outrage!

If you are not familiar with the term Lysenkoism, it would be very instructive for you to research it. It now means the conforming of science to the prevailing political view. Historically, Lysenko was a favorite of Stalin because Lysenko’s view of biological evolution, Lamarkian evolution, was consistent with Communist political ideology. So Darwinian biological evolution was outlawed and Darwinian biologists were purged. The effect upon the USSR was profound and long lasting. Lamarkian evolutionary practices led to declining agricultural harvests year after year after year. The disastrous effect upon Russian harvests were exactly as would have been predicted by Darminian evolutionary biology.

Things like reason and true altruism (the kind which presents no advantage whatsoever to the one being selfless).

Precious few humans possess the gift of reason, and even fewer also have the capacity to use it properly and not just in situations where their emotional preferences aren’t distorting their ability to think.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated the existence of the thing you call “true altruism”, unless you count the ants that raise themselves onto blades of grass so that sheep can eat them and spread the ant-behavior-altering parasite they contain. Presumably you don’t consider entities that have been modified into vectors to count.

A trait that truly sacrificed itself without getting any ‘benefit’ in return would erase itself from existence, and so violates the ethical calculus.

As to overpopulation; most affluent societies in recent decades seem to, generally, be restricting their population growth by voluntarily limiting their children to two or less. Whether this is a long-term trend or not remains to be seen. Rather than attribute this to the benefit of affluence a better explanation might be that affluance at least opens the opportunity for the education of women that leads, potentially, to the empowerment of choice. So, in keeping with the spirit of this site; our best chance of avoiding death by overpopulation is the encouragement of education, particularly of women.

In regards to the argument coached through philosophy vs. science on the intrinsic value of human life, picture for a moment the unfortunate possibility that at some point in your past you had an accident and died. Your friends, family and loved ones would morn for a while and eventually life fills in the gap left by your absence. Net effect: nada. Sorry just the way it is, myself included. If I die, frankly, a few years from now, everything goes along fine. Extrapolate to the human species. If we die out the worst effect will probably be to the millions of microorganisms that consider us a dandy home. That and cats. Cats would probably wonder where the big dumb guys with the opposable thumbs went off to and what happened to dinner. There’s an apocryphal story of an astronomer asked what would be the effect if the sun exploded and the earth was incinerated. The response: “Nothing, it’s only a small planet”…

But the response to this is not despair. Hey, it’s pretty amazing we’re here at all with no divine intervention in a world that’s evolved octopus, creatures that play jazz, and beer.

…Of course I’m speaking as a fairly well off, white inhabitant of a reasonably affluent country. That might color my perceptions a little…

Sorry, but I just can’t resist tossing an egg at this one. This “conservation of information” stuff is just so astoundingly ridiculous.

“Specified Information an unevidenced assertion? Are you suggesting that the nucleotide alphabet encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule is without evidence? Interesting. Why don’t you explain to me how this instructional information with backup and protection programming, is somehow the result of unintelligent causes.”

The computer in front of me is presently generating image recognition and classification agents using an evolutionary process. At start of this process there were 216 bytes of seed information, and there is now approximately 200 megabytes. It is also possible to start with “random simulated abiogenesis” and thus to start with zero bytes of initial seed information and obtain the same result– it just takes a few days longer to randomly generate the first primal replicator.

I have to admit it though: if you don’t really understand information theory very much and you don’t get evolution, the “conservation of information” stuff sounds plausible. Sorry to say though that I violate this supposed principle every day, and am presently working toward a commercial technology that does so. There are other commercial technologies already on the market that are presently used in industry that violate Dembski’s supposed conservation laws.

I write a blog about these kinds of subjects. Here’s a post on this topic that explains some of the background. It’s geared toward people who understand computer science a little, so if you don’t you might have to catch up on some background concepts.

That being said, I am, however, sort-of on your side in regard to anti-humanist apocalypse nuts who drool about viruses wiping out humanity. They creep me out as much as the people on the other side of the fence who drool over how their loving God is going to rapture them to heaven and then torture and kill everyone else and send them to roast in hell. When you think about it, it’s really the same genocidal fantasy dressed up differently. It’s creepy and it’s kooky.

There probably *are* actual “conservation of information” laws — and they likely pose as much obstacle to the evolution of life (and even its spontaneous generation) as the conservation of mass-energy does.

That’s the really awful bit — by reappropriating a bit of terminology, the IDists are screwing up the reputation of future concepts.

Umm, it is precisely algorithms which demonstrate that Complex Specified Information, as in the 4 Nucleotide instructional alphabet encoded on the spine of the DNA molecule, could not have come about by unintelligent natural processes.

Define “Complex Specified Information” objectively, in a way which is neither circular nor assumes the premise. Heck, how about you define “Information” objectively. Define “Complex” objectively. Define “Specified” objectively.

You talk about the “4 neucleotide instructional alphabet”. How is it an alphabet? It is not abstract, like an alphabet. It is not, strictly speaking, arbitrary, like an alphabet. Nor is it “instructional”.

The problem with identifing reason, or altruism, or any of the other examples you cited as reasons for humanity’s “specialness” (ignoring the fact that they have been throughly debunked as being unique to humans) is that they come from the necessarily biased position of a human being. We have altruism et al, but we’re slow, we’re weak, we have poor eyesite, a terrible sense of smell, we have massive wars.

Surely dogs would not be so impressed with us, nor horses, nor dare I say, octopi, as we are with ourselves.

I’m a scientist and an atheist. I read the accounts that PZ suggested about the Pianka talk. I was appalled. I continue to be appalled, even by PZ.

PZ, has it occurred to you that it actually doesn’t matter whether humans die off now, or taking 90% of the biosphere with us, or not at all? From the perspective of life in the universe, that is, or even from the perspective of life on earth.

If all life dies out, and I mean ALL life, than statistically speaking, it is reasonable to believe that in a few billion years there would be a thriving ecosphere on the earth, which would remain covered in water, bathed in sunlight, and so forth. But of course, it would be impossible to destroy all life on earth, so we can drop that time scale down to a paltry few hundred million years of recovery time for the worst calamity humanity could possibly muster.

So all this talk about what would be “good for the biosphere” shows a real lack of perspective on the part of the speaker about what a biosphere is and the timescales on which it operates: mammals are no better for the biosphere than amoeba, really.

Caledonian:
Your ‘altruistic’ ants are, as you noted, serving as a vector for another species’ genes. Most ‘altruism’ is based on such a genetic calculus – see the wikipedia under “kin selection”. But there is another form of altruism: “reciprocal altruism”, an insight due to Robert Trivers in the early 1970’s. One individual does a costly behavior for an unrelated other, trusting that the favor will be returned. This is possible in social systems where cheaters can be identified and excluded… but in the 30 years since Trivers, it’s been observed mostly in humans, and also in vampire bats (who share food with thirsty cave-mates, non-kin who could die within days without successful foraging).

Humans are significantly singular, certainly so since we’ve become the only hominid on the planet. We talk and we make promises to each other (and we cook our meat). The first two seem interlinked, and it’s unclear which came first. But making explicit promises, such as the marriage contract (ubiqutious among humans (and yes, many individuals make several!)) is not seen among other animals. The nature of monogamy in geese and marmosets is different (hormonal).

This reminds me of old discussions about how to differentiate humans from GOFAI: “Good Old-fashioned Artificial Intelligences” (before everyone switched to artificial neural nets). GOFAI talked a good line, and it seemed likely they’d be queueing up for the Turing Test pretty soon – but Joe Weizenbaum pointed out that the kind of talk between a young couple over the crib of their newborn isn’t just about communicating data as GOFAI could, it’s about intentions – and commitments to span decades. We make promises to each other. Ain’t nobody else alive on the planet intentionally promising much of anything – not even pre-verbal humans.

I think that the commenter is assuming what he has to prove. Dolphins pass the mirror-self-recognition test, the major experimental test with a good degree of acceptance for demonstrating self-consciousness in non-human animals. There are a number of cognitive studies on dolphins that do establish a facility for problem-solving and ability to parse an artificial language correctly. Usually, people with the sort of anthropocentric attitude of the commenter will at this point start arguing quantity, as if we should expect non-human animals to be exactly like humans in cognitive capability before they can be granted any part of these properties. Eventually, they stop trying to argue the evidence at all and fall back on dismissal, usually throwing in a number of insults as squink.

I don’t get how this morphed into Christian-bashing on one side, and clumsy assertion of creationist theories on the other.

Pianka, from this report and others, seems pretty copacetic with the idea that 90 percent of humanity is going to die sometime very soon. If he didn’t say they should die, or that someone should hurry up and make sure they die, he also didn’t suggest that someone get busy to come up with ways to delay or avoid the tragedy.

More remarkably, he apparently gets applause for these remarks.

The relevant literary analogy for me is Dr. Strangelove. You can be a scientist, and an atheist, and committed to science as the best means we have for advancing knowledge, and still recognize that applied science is not always benign. It was science, after all, that gave us the H bomb, Agent Orange, chemical emissions that have chronically polluted the environment, non-disposable vats of radioactive waste, frontal lobotomies, the perverse experiments of Dr. Mengele, and so on. Absent a moral compass and appropriate controls, it may be science that gives us mis-applied genetic constructs that cause health and environmental problems, nanobots operating beyond our control in ways that might be more pernicious than helpful, and so on.

That does not make science bad – but it does make it appropriate for people, especially including other scientists (which, after all, is what Mims is) to comment on the implications of what scientists say and do. Science, like any pursuit of knowledge, is amoral within its own boundaries, and just as capable of being used in ways that hurt people (and animals, and plants, for that matter) as in ways that help them.

Defensively bashing Christians (what does the rapture have to do with this and how do we move any ball forward by using perjorative and bigoted terms like ‘fundie’?) fails to address the issue. This is really an issue that scientists ought to be discussing among scientists, as scientists, with full sensitivity to morality and social responsibilities.

Mims, near as I can tell, was shocked as a scientist by the lack of perspective Pianka and the audience had on what Pianka was saying. He raised for the world’s consideration the callousness of what was said, and the callousness of the audience reaction. That many scientists are unwilling to address that concern head on, and descend instead into religious bigotry, is more troubling than the speech and the reaction. The blogworld response to Mims concerns illustrates that the failure to reflect and consider the moral obligations of scientists is more generalized than just one meeting in one provincial capital.

Nucleotides arranged as specific coding. Coding is information. Every example of specified information we know of has an intelligent agent as it’s source. Programs require programmers.

Scott, could we have a definition of what non-specific coding is? Otherwise you appear to have concluded that DNA is ‘specified information’ based on a tautology. I could probably also nitpick in that coding is surely the method of representing the information, not the information itself.

Might stop by in the AM if I’m not banned for suggesting that intelligence played a role in us being what we are and where we are.

It’s a clever technique, I’ll grant you that: attempting to plant that seed of suspicion in readers’ minds that scientists close ranks when dissenters appear. ID supporters often use this line – but the only instances of banning I have heard of are on the pro-ID blogs!

The plural of “octopus” is “octopodes” coming of course from the Ancient Greek for foot, i.e. “pus” in the singlular and “podes” in the plural. The plural is absolutely not “octopi” because the -us (s)/ -i(pl) suffix is from Latin.

So “octopuddies” was almost (phonetically!) correct.

This makes the plural of “platypus” “platypodes” which is a very satisfying word.

Ah my Classics master would be proud. I still shudder when I see/hear “anorexic” instead of “anorectic”.

“…people there are getting death threats over it. Here’s one example of the kind of email they’re getting”

I can’t take criticism seriously from another who can’t get a story straight.

P’s statement does NOT indicate that the provided email contained a death threat. He clearly wrote that the email was ONE EXAMPLE of the KIND of email they have been getting. He did not say ‘Here is an example of the death threats they have been getting.’

Mims, near as I can tell, was shocked as a scientist by the lack of perspective Pianka and the audience had on what Pianka was saying. He raised for the world’s consideration the callousness of what was said, and the callousness of the audience reaction. That many scientists are unwilling to address that concern head on, and descend instead into religious bigotry, is more troubling than the speech and the reaction.

Exactly. There is no rational human perspective from which a 90% “culling” of the human race is a good thing. People who think it is are advocating the deaths of everyone reading this blog, questioning our very right to exist. And then people have the termidity to act surprised and superior when other people find this horrifying.

You should read what the eco-nuts are writing on other blogs, about how I am a scourge on the earth, a cancer, and so forth. This is the rhetoric of Pianka’s supporters and to some degree Pianka himself. It is foul, anti-human, irrational, and ignorant of basic ethics and to some degree even of basic science.

And they should be called on it, especially by rational people. They should in fact be ridiculed just as strongly as any other irrational death cult.

By the way, programs do not require programmers at all. They require several million years of natural evolutionary algorithms capable of producing programmers. Its all a matter of perspective.

On the oncoming human apocalypse thing, I’ve had a second-hand copy of Olaf Stapleton’s Last and First Men sitting unread on my shelves for ages, which I just started reading the other night. It has a very long point of view, flitting over millenia and billenia as though they were mere moments in evolutionary time. At one point the First Men (that’s us) are reduced to a mere three members after a worldwide nuclear disaster. Their successors, the Second Men, last longer, hundreds of thousands of years, but successive invasions of Martian hivemind bacteria take their toll. The Third Men last millions of years, with multiple waves of civilization, but eventually create the hyper-intelligent but unsympathetic Fourth Men, who reduce the Third Men to slave status, then create an improved Fifth race as their successors. Interesting stuff, for SF published in 1930. I might have to chase up some of Stapleton’s other books.

Not knowing first-hand, I can offer up a third- (or fourth) hand synopsis. It is my understanding that Pianka merely stated that human encrouchment into more and more habitat, combined with greater and greater density, is likely to lead to many more outbreaks of nasties such as ebola, etc. His aside was that the results of repeated, devastating pandemics reducing human population levels would, in fact, be a boon for the biosphere. Objectively and factually accurate but hardly advocating the spreading of disease to wipe out the bulk of the human population to improve the environment.

One is not allowed to state unpleasant facts. Increasing human population, both in density and extent, is a “good”. Period. “Be fruitful and multiply” without bound or without any other consideration is the only acceptable rule. ANY suggestion that many things would, objectively and in fact, improve should humans decline (almost for whatever reason) must not be stated.

Pianka was not advocating genocide or engineering killer viruses or the unleashing of pandemic-causing pathogens. He merely stated, as an aside, that the biosphere would benefit greatly from a large human population decline. It just happened to be a statement that finished a portion of a talk dealing with disease and pandemics.

I refuse to answer and choose neither. I find it unacceptable, period, to intentionally or knowingly wipe out entirely ANY living organism. It is a form of crime beyond any other. I see it as akin to going to Mars, finding life there in some isolated location, and then wiping it out. A crime of indescribable magnitude.

One individual does a costly behavior for an unrelated other, trusting that the favor will be returned. This is possible in social systems where cheaters can be identified and excluded… but in the 30 years since Trivers, it’s been observed mostly in humans, and also in vampire bats (who share food with thirsty cave-mates, non-kin who could die within days without successful foraging).

And if I remember correctly, vampire bat colonies in which such sharing takes place have significantly lower mortality rates than (hypothetical and mathematically examined) ones that don’t. Helping the colony ultimately leads to the propagation of the trait. I’m detecting self-interest…

I am *still* unaware of any example of “True Altruism”. Anyone willing to provide one?

When you encounter DNA, you encounter specificity of function. Purposive encoding of biochemical instructions. We know that intelligent agents produce information-rich purposive sequences like this. Humans sequence letters in specified patterns to produce instructions, etc… In the cell, the sequencing of amino acids is directed by information. The 4 nucleotides along the spine of the DNA molecule are represented with the letters A,T,G & C. And interestingly, the coding regions demonstrate specificity just like written programming codes, linguistic writings, etc… So, just as we arrange letters in the written alphabet to convey a message based on their arrangement, so do the sequences of nucleotide bases convey specific instructions for building cellular proteins. And DNA bases do not manifest self-organizational bonding behavior that can explain their specific sequencing. The old Darwinian tactic of throwing time at an issue does not solve the problem of specified information. Information always requires an intelligent agency. The inference is logical. Imaginary and mindless algorithms which magically produce specified information (when given enough time) smack of desperation. Desperation to avoid the logical inference to a designing intelligence.

The funny thing is too that Natural Selection presupposes a preexisting mechanism of self-replication. But self-replication depends upon specified sequences of amino acids and proteins. So, there’s that ugly cart-before-the-horse Darwinian scenario. Remember NS can only select what “chance” has first produced. So then how did said mechanism produce the initial information? You have to presuppose what is to be explained to begin with! Question begging at it’s worst.

CSI – If I see “PZPZPZPZPZPZPZPZPZPZ” and then I see “Help! My philosophical bias and pride prevent me from considering a powerful designing intelligence!” I see first a repetitious and unordered sequence, but it is not complex or informative. The second instance, in contrast, shows me specified information with a purpose with high information content… like the arrangements of the 4 nucleotide sequences. Much like a meaningful linquistic sentence, or the functional lines of a programming code. Another important thing I might note too is that DNA transcends the properties of matter. Chemical bonds do not determine the sequence of the bases. The nucleotides assume a dizzying array of possible sequences and express a plethora of instructional messages.

There remains no adequate causal model for the origin of specified information, just hand-waving speculation. Many here would be “illuminated” if they grasped the probably factor of 1/2 x 1/10^150, but that’s a discussion in and of itself. I have read the attempts to explain it away… I conclude that they hold no water. And don’t even get me started about the dizzying probabilistic hurdles that must be crossed to construct even a single short protein molecule of 100 amino acids in length. Ooooohhhh, the glaring problems that get glossed over by those with a philosophical axe to grind. *sigh

“DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

I am *still* unaware of any example of “True Altruism”. Anyone willing to provide one?

Somewhat simplistic but what about the soldier that throws himself/herself upon a grenade to save those around them, perhaps civilians of the country they’re fighting against? A fireman who knowingly enters a burning building to rescue someone, even a pet, knowing there’s a fair chance that they may not come out alive? Whistleblowers who violate laws preventing them from disclosing information, perhaps even officially “secret” information, to stop a criminal or unConstitutional act, KNOWING that they are likely to eat the sh*t as a result?

I myself don’t tend to believe in “true” altruism but do have to think hard about certain situations.

There was nothing to gain from Mother Theresa’s altruism (and the countless others who have done just like her). She certainly was not passing along her genes and it would contradict her theology to suggest that she was “working her way into heaven”. The vast majority of missionary workers do what they do out of a gratitude for the gift they have already received, not to earn it.

So, it is examples like this which reinforce my belief in the uniqueness of the human mind/spirit and cause me to doubt the Darwinian Narrative.

I don’t really doubt that, though it may make more economic sense to focus on manufacturing while importing food. China is already a major food producer and exports high quality processed, packaged food. I’m not sure what China you’re talking about (Mao’s been dead for a long time in case nobody told you) but the one I’m thinking of is one of the world’s fastest growing economies with building booms going on in every city. The government is oppressive in a number of ways (the one child policy being an instance) and there is probably still too much graft and nepotism to have a really healthy economy. But imminent starvation is not one of the big problems.

What I do doubt is that the earth can support a Chinese population all living the way Americans now live. Something has to give.

The funny thing is too that Natural Selection presupposes a preexisting mechanism of self-replication.

Not correct. Natural selection is inevitable once ANYTHING starts self-replicating. It can be a single molecule (a catalytic RNA, for instance) or a complex of molecules. Not to feed the false idea that there must be a designer, but the instant someone creates a self-replicating robot, be it a nanobot or a macrobot, natural selection takes place no matter what you do. ALL replication inevitably produces errors at some baseline level. NOTHING can be replicated with absolute fidelity. That is all it takes. Error in replication. A single spontaneously forming molecule that self replicates will make errors and natural selection will acting at that instant and forever more in its existence.

Natural selection is inevitable and has NO prerequisites except self-replication and the fact that no replication is error-free.

My guess is all of these death threats being directed to Dr. Pianka are comming from those “loving xian people” who watch and send money to TV Preachers, go to church every Sunday, voted for Tom Delay (R-TX) and stoutly beat their children (according to scripture) with leather belts, wood sticks and closed fists. Good upstanding bible believer type people, who can wave a US flag and ask G-d’s blessing on the USA, while George W Bush gives Richard Cheney wet-dreams by dropping Depleted Uranium Munitions on Iraqi Children…. (What a wonderful Country we used to live in eh? Almost makes you see Darth Sidous standing in the USA Congress with his dis-figured face praising the 1st GOP Empire in Washington DC)

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the office of the White House Counsel are preparing a draft document laying out the President’s Wartime Authority to remain in office past 2008, The Register has learned.

The scheme is described as an “Emergency Continuity Presidency” made necessary by the extraordinary circumstances and unique challenges of protecting the United States from the threat of international terrorism.
“The world changed on 9/11,” a confidential DoJ memo obtained by The Register explains, “..and no Administration is US history is better suited to adapt productively to those changes than this one. The Attorney General supports the basic framework in the White House Counsel’s draft proposal for a future Executive Order establishing a Continuity Presidency, with two provisos: 1. There must be at least the appearance of a time limit, which the AG believes might be satisfied by tying the duration of the Continuity Presidency to the duration of the GWOT [global war on terrorism]; and 2. The House and Senate Majority Leaders and the Chairpersons of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees must issue a written certification that they have approved the plan.

(Yes, it’s an April Fools joke. At least..uh..I’m pretty sure it’s an April Fools joke)

OMG – Does anyone else reading all this realize that this is all just so much hand waving and agitation? This is the most ridiculous debate I believe I have ever witnessed. I started discussing this with a fellow over on DailyKos yesterday and he had the same “Humans are more important” argument that was posted here. The people who are upset seem to be reading from the same script.

But in any event, trying to debate these morons is just foolishness! Pianka never said he advocated wiping out 90% of the population. Never. So the debate is freaking moot! He mentioned how it would be good for the biosphere to remove the bulk of the human population, but that was just an aside. I could come up with a million examples of this type of aside… let’s see…

“I’d hate to stop maintaining the neighborhood swimming pool because a lot of families rely on it for hot weather entertainment; however, it sure would be great for the frog and mosquito populations if we were to just stop all maintenance on the pool.”

“Removing these native people from their traditional jungle habitat would be a crime against their civiliation, but you have to admit, removing their slash-and-burn farming techniques from that environment would be great for the jungle ecosystem.”

What the hell is wrong with all these people? I’m afraid that this is all about attacking science, for *any* perceived slight, or making up pereceived slights out of nothing for the sole purpose of attacking the educated. It’s callus, calculated and completely absurd. Please stop debating these people, they’re HOPELESSLY STUPID.

Ah, but NOT without the express belief that they would end up immediately after in paradise with 100 virgins, etc. This disqualifies it as altruism. They had to be driven by the belief of substantial reward AFTER the act is accomplished.

If one cares to reduce it to the point of absurdity, even the most extreme forms of altruism still come down to self-interest, though possibly requiring many layers of indirection. Mother Theresa *chose* to do her work, presumably getting some personal satisfaction from her actions, not to mention the promise of eternal reward. People who sacrifice their lives for others (eg the soldier who threw himself on the grenade) could be making a (possibly subconscious) tradeoff – “would I be able to live with myself knowing that I survived and let the others die”. It seems to me that altruism is just the abiility to delay or divert gratification (which is not to diminish its value or admirability).

Say, if you earnestly and whole-heartedly share something people don’t appreciate (such as really shoddy advice), believing that it’s for the greater good, does that count as altruism as well? After all, you’re not being rewarded for doing so.

Of course, you could be surrounded with hype and then anything you share will be in high demand, even if it’s total bunk. As in the case of Mother Teresa’s “works”.

Many here would be “illuminated” if they grasped the probably factor of 1/2 x 1/10^150

I can grasp it. It’s a probability billions of times higher than the probability of any particular shuffle of two decks of cards with different backs. In other words, such a probability is clearly not an impossibility.

What, exactly, the stew of quotas, irrigation subisidies, and price supports that is American agrriculture policy has to do with market economics escapes me.

Is this the one week per year when libertarians pretend that agriculture in the United States operates like a free-market fantasy? I’m ready for the resumption of the regularly programmed American-agriculture-as-socialist-dystopia broadcasts, already.

It doesn’t seem particularly farfetched that a social creature that lived in close proximity with other creatures that shared its social inclinations would develop instincts for personal sacrifice to preserve the group.

In my understanding, soldiers are conditioned to view members of their squad as extensions of their family. Sacrificing one’s own life to save members of your family can be an evolutionarily successful strategy.

I can take a bee away from its hive and into a laboratory. If that bee stings me while in the laboratory, fatally wounding itself, it’s not actually giving any benefit to its hivemates. Yet we would still consider the instinct (as it would function under normal circumstances) to be evolutionarily beneficial and ultimately “rational”.

Taking humans out of their normal niche (which most humans lineages haven’t been in for thousands of years by this point) means that they would be stuck with a bunch of instincts that developed under different conditions. I think we can safely say that a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his squadmates is acting on instincts that were once rational and beneficial. Whether they’re still useful, or whether the soldier is being victimized by his society and his genetic drives, is a much more complex question that has no direct bearing on the issue at hand.

I’m still waiting for that example of “true altruism”. As the concept seems to be equivalent to self-victimization, I doubt you’ll find many examples in the natural or unnatural worlds.

To J.B.S. Haldane:
You just summarized kin selection as pithily as your namesake did in the 1930’s.

To Caledonian:
Reciprocal altruism is, as you pointed out earlier, ultimately self-serving – as it must be to be an evolutionarily stable system. The proximal psychologies which sustain reciprocal relationships are various (trust, fear of cheaters) and for humans as complex as anything else we do.
Any “true altruism” is not of this world (i.e. not evolved), any more than is homosexuality (which also tends to diminish descendents).

A useful book here is Helena Cronin’s THE ANT AND THE PEACOCK, 1991, a sophisticated historical study of altruism and of sexual selection per the title’s totem animals. Her chapter 15 is “Human Altruism: a natural kind?” and this highlights the nuances of human continuity and distinctness here. It’s really a difficult topic.

So what does this do to IDists’ claims that flagella etc. are machines?

You are using logic there. Logic and ID don’t go along. It’s common for them to claim a thing and its opposite without noticing any problems. Funny thing is that sometimes they can go as far as proving YOUR point!

I once met an ID that claimed that the theory of evolution was wrong because speciation was much better explained by genetic mutations…

Any “true altruism” is not of this world (i.e. not evolved), any more than is homosexuality (which also tends to diminish descendents).

If it exists in the world, it is of the world. I shouldn’t need to explain that.

Does homosexuality actually diminish descendents? More to the point, did it when humans were still in their ecological and sociological niche as hunter-gatherers? Lastly, accepting for the sake of argument the unproven assertion that it does reduce direct offspring, are the factors responsible for human homosexuality responsible for other traits which might convey an even greater advantage than the presumptive disadvantage they cause part of the time?

In populations where malaria is rampant, an allele that conveys resistance to malaria in the heterozygous state persists despite causing sickle-cell anemia in the homozygous state. Sickle-cell anemia is not selected for. The gene responsible IS.

The comparison with malaria resistance is good. Applying the logic of such multiple selection pressures to whatever behavior constitutes “true altruisim” (which almost certainly involves more complex genetics than for malaria/sickle-cell) can suggest how “true altruism” could exist in humans despite lack of direct adaptive value. Someday this might even be a testable hypothesis.

We didn’t even need to define ‘true altruism’ more specifically than as any costly behavior which benefits others but doesn’t directly or indirectly provide benefit to self or kin. Human blood banks are a borderline example, though I really like knowing they might be there when I’m the recipient rather than donor. Of course there are people (Zahavi, Geoffrey Miller) who argue that what *really* motivates people to donate is that sexy displayable badge of costly altruism which only a healthy person could do, and which therefore gets the interest of potential mates…

To UT and TAS: One very simple way to defuse this and call Mims on the carpet: publsih the complete text and audio recording of the speeches. Otherwise you have completely ceded the debate to the critics. Otherwise, what could be so terrible about a nice scientist making a speech and getting a prize?

Then can religion never promote true altruism — will it always be using expectation of reward in the afterlife to promote pseudo-altruism?

Correct (IMHO), though that’s not a problem if someone’s religious code inspires them to help others, and – despite being an atheist 🙂 – religion can hardly be singled out. Clan traditions and parental love could just as easily be criticised on this point.

What would happen if such pseudo-altruism disappeared?

Maybe the people affected would realise that the more direct pseudo-altruism of acting to improve other people’s lives is just as rewarding (and that their behaviour was actually based on this (rather than hopes of eternal life) all along?